Building The Roadmap To The “Internet Of Payments”

Mahindra Comviva is convinced of one thing: having some of the largest merchants in the U.S. capable of enabling NFC payments by the end of 2015 will form the foundation of the “Internet of payments” and turn the mobile payments tide in this massive payments market. Why? A network of hardware on payment card devices will serve as the “rich and fertile ground for innovation and expansion.” But will it?

THE POWER OF MOBILITY

“Who envisaged that one day payments will be made with just a tap of a mobile at POS terminals? Who believed that businesses could reach out to their exact target audience while they were shopping?”

That ability to connect, identify, locate and personalize – mobility – is more powerful than products and services themselves, says Mahindra Comviva. Mobility today stands for two-way engagement, enabling a new payment experience for customers. Players like Uber and Lyft, Starbucks, Apple and others are using mobility as a catalyst for innovation. Retailers can locate interested shoppers based on proximity, and payments can even be made via BLE. The impact of mobility on the payments space is perhaps more powerful than most would expect.

MOBILITY ENABLING PAYMENTS

Mobile payments add an entirely new dimension to transform industries like retail, music, transportation and hospitality. Emerging services are also delivering rich payment experiences – Vicinity, for one, “is designed to bridge the gap between online, physical and mobile channels for customer checkouts,” according to the whitepaper. It does so by recognizing when customers and their mobile devices are near a Vicinity-enabled online payment checkout system like a tablet or PC.

But while these new technologies and services enabling payments may seem to make things simpler, they could potentially complicate things for both the payer and payee, says Mahindra Comviva, if left unchecked. In the digital future, mobile strategies need to be established to simplify the transaction – including things like automatically applied coupons, loyalty points, context-aware discounts, biometrics, NFC, PIN, real-time fraud detection, and more.

CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT & PERSONALIZATION

Relevance and personalization are increasingly becoming critical in a consumer’s shopping experience. Google, Amazon and YouTube, for example, recommend relevant information based on a user’s purchasing, surfing or viewing history.

Now, new tools are being developed to test mobile apps based on HCE, the cloud, eSE, UICC, mSD, NFC tags, smartwatches and more to issue a payment product and serve as personalization validation tools. Ongoing customer engagements, says Mahindra Comviva, will also be digitally built into certain products. The Internet of Things allows almost any physical object to be connected, like home appliances or cars.

GOING HYPERLOCAL

According to Mahindra Comviva, in the near future, geofencing (or using GPOS technology to put a virtual perimeter around a physical location) will be broadly used for delivering location-based offers to mobile devices, and bring more consumers in stores. And since consumers need to opt in to receive these types of messages, retailers need to make offers relevant – rather than bombarding them with irrelevant content.

One example are McDonald’s franchises in Columbus that are integrating beacon technology to give customers an enhanced dining service. This allows the restaurant to deliver coupon offers, alerts, employment opportunities and surveys as customers enter.

THE FUTURE OF MOBILE PAYMENTS

As of right now, notes Mahindra Comviva, all major payments disruptors have yet to bring mobile payments mainstream. And within the U.S., wallets based on secure elements, touch ID and HCE will likely make a big push toward that widespread adoption.

“All these technologies, devices and ecosystem creators seem to have huge potential in coming years to give payments a smooth and seamless ride upon mobility,” Mahindra says. And Apple, among other players, is pushing mass adoption of NFC along – the NFC payment market is actually estimated to grow to $100 billion next year.

Looking a bit further into the future, products in stores might interact with shoppers and reveal their lifecycle. Telco players, while there’s still a long way to go, have already jumped on board to get mobility-based future augmented reality technologies enabled. Connected cars are a very real concept today, and innovations like MasterCard and RBC’s pilot wristband Nymi – which offers frictionless authentication via a person’s ECG wave – are already changing the way payments are made and secured.

To get key retailer strategies for mobile wallet payments acceptance capabilities, proximity marketing and developing an innovative use case, download the full whitepaper by clicking the button below.